Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/420

412  for life under somewhat disadvantageous conditions. To this may be added a total absence of medical practitioners; a circumstance which however might, by a cynical mind, be rather reckoned among the counterbalancing advantages of forest existence.

In form and stature the bush-negroes of Surinam may rank among the best specimens of the Ethiopian type; the men are often six feet and more in height, with well-developed limbs and pleasing open countenances; and the women in every physical respect are, to say the least, worthy of their mates. Ill-modelled trunks and disproportioned limbs are, in fact, as rare among them as they are common among some lighter-complexioned races. Their colour is in general very dark, and gives no token of the gradual tendency to assume a fairer tint that may be observed among the descendants of negroes resident in more northerly latitudes; their hair, too, is as curly as that of any Niam-niam or Darfooree chief, or native of Senegal. I have heard it asserted more often than once, that by long domicilement in the South-American continent the negro type has a tendency to mould itself into one approaching that of the Indian aboriginal; and something of the kind might be looked for, if anywhere, among the bush-negroes of the Surinam interior. But in the specimens that I saw, and they were many, I could not detect any such modification.

Their language is a curious and uncouth mixture. When it is analyzed, English appears to form its basis; next on the list of contributors comes Portuguese, then Dutch, besides a sprinkling of genuine African words thrown in at random; and the thick soft African pronunciation over all. But of this jargon the negroes themselves make no use in writing, for which they employ Dutch, thereby showing themselves in this respect possessed of a truer feeling of the fitness of things than, I regret to say, their Moravian friends, who have taken superfluous pains to translate books of instruction and devotion into the so-called “negro language” for the supposed benefit of their half-tamed scholars — an instance, one amongst many, of being too practical by half.

Fortunately for the bush-negroes themselves, their ultimate tendency in language, as in everything else, is to uniformity with the general creole colonial type; one not of the very highest, it may be, but much superior to the half or three-quarters savagery in which they at present live. Their little, and, so to speak, accidental nationality, is composed of elements too feeble, and too loosely put together, not to be ultimately reabsorbed into the more vigorous and better-constructed mass to which, though under differing conditions ,it once belonged. Old mistrusts and antipathies are fast wearing themselves out in the daily contact with European life; and contact with Europeans never fails to produce, where negroes are concerned, first imitation, then assimilation. So long as slavery lasted, this was of course an impossibility for the bush-negroes; it is now a mere question of time, longer or shorter according to the discretion and tact of the colonial government itself. And we may reasonably hope that the sagacity and moderation by which that same government has thus far always distinguished itself will not fail it in this matter either.

Freedom from taxation and internal autonomy are the special privileges which the bush-negroes in their present condition enjoy; by the latter they set some store, by the former much. On the other hand they are fully aware of the greater advantages and enjoyments of a more settled and civilized form of life than their own, and would sacrifice much to make it theirs. The result of the exchange would be undoubtedly a very beneficial one, not only to the bush-negroes themselves but to the colony at large. Labour is the one great requisite of Surinam; rich in every gift of unassisted nature, she is poor of that which alone could enable her to make a profit of these gifts. In these maroon subjects of hers close at hand she possesses a copious and as yet an unemployed reserve-force of labour, superior in most respects to the coolie or Chinese article, and, which is a main point, cheaper by far. The complete incorporation into colonial life and work of the negro element, now comparatively isolated and wasted in the bush, would add about a third to the progressiveness and energy of Dutch Surinam.

 

are fine fellows of their kind; I have seldom seen finer. Indians are, within certain limits, picturesque; Chinese, if not ornamental, are decidedly useful; and coolies, though not unfrequently neither, are sometimes both. But,